I’m in a great mood, but this is very important : 11 observations from a High School History class.
I sat in a sophomore history class and watched as the teacher, a gesticulating, boots-wearing, early-50s gentleman* enthusiastically held court on The Enlightenment.
He grabs and keeps students’ attention. It has been said of him, by sources close to me, that he is “…one of the only teachers that can lecture all period and keep students’ attention.”
What a magnificent compliment.
So I sat in the back and joined the ride.
——
*full transparency: also my friend
Dialogues.
How come you didn’t respond to my email? She asked.
I did. He said.
You did? She replied. I didn’t get it.
I’ll check. He said. After this period.
Okay. She said.
Actually…he said. Can you send it again?
Book recommendations.
He reminded the class of the upcoming book discussion on Neil Postman’s 1985 media treatise Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. He has spoken passionately and articulately about the importance of this book, as canon, alongside any books regarding mass media, communication, education, and entertainment in the 20th and 21st centuries.
I ordered a copy.
Are we good, AI? No. You heard it here first.
Tech is available now, he said to the class, where I don’t know whether you wrote a paper or not. This AI, this artificial intelligence, is disruptive. It can take any question and write out the answers in a way that replicates a person. This is huge. We good? Are we good?
The class nods.
It’s not just the Content.
It’s the Delivery. The Execution. The Manner of Conveying Information. This teacher does it well. Exceptionally well. His excitement is viral, and he does so in a way that keeps attention and focus; bouncing and dancing around topics in a dizzying journey, but somehow continually returning and cycling back around to touch on and reiterate the important parts. As with most of us, he has a handful of phrases he leans on. I love these:
Got it?
Are we all clear?
You understand?
Does that make sense?
Here’s the thing:
Preface the Enlightenment.
I’m in a great mood, he says, but this is, this is a Watershed Moment. This is very important.
He continues:
What mattered, pre-Enlightenment was this: ‘Who’s your Daddy?’
He yells this, glaring at each student as he marches around the room. ‘That,’ he stalks around, ‘is how power was passed down. It all had to do with who your daddy was. And then that changed.’
He went on to speak of:
A change in thinking that eventually led to a belief in government existing to protect individuals’ rights
A triad of things these thinkers believed in:
The existence of a Deity, and the distinction between Christians of the time and Deists (‘clock wound up, and then let it run’)
The existence of Natural Laws (e.g. do not Lie, do not Steal)
The belief that a government should not harm people, it should protect people
The Renaissance and how the role of evidence and thinking moved to the Scientific Method
Adam Smith and the foundations laid for Capitalism
The roots laid for developing and articulating The Declaration of Independence as a codified idea to build a country around
He drew a number of flow charts, timelines, and bulleted lists at a dizzying pace; I was unable to track every one of these, but somehow, the combination of scrawls with his explanation made sense overall.
What are Rights?
After discussing Natural Laws, he talked about things that Enlightenment Thinkers began to consider as Rights every person should have. Of course, their definition of “person” was considerably different at the time, but they included ideas such as everyone* having the right to:
Life,
Liberty (the right to be free),
The Pursuit of Property (Jefferson later changed to Happiness)
*’everyone’ referring primarily to white, landowning males, which clearly is not ‘everyone
Rousseau’s Social Contract.
He expounded on Rousseau’s Social Contract: the idea that there is a contract between a government and its people, and that the government gets all its power from people
He broke down the etymology of democracy:
Demos coming from the Greek for people
Cracy coming from the Greek for rule
A Republic, he reminded us, is built on the Rule of Law.
Elephant in the.
Slavery is the idea that all men are not created equal.
As a fundamental explanation of the roots of slavery, this is a good starting sentence.
Wisdom.
“I don’t think you should give your allegiance to anything unless you understand what you’re giving allegiance to.”
The Teacher
Document relationships.
Something to think about, he said: The Constitution protects the Declaration of Independence.
Yes.
Hands went up, questions were asked, dialogs were exchanged, disagreements were listened to, and the class stayed with him throughout his expounding on the wild ride of the Enlightenment and how it led to big changes in the modern world.
I am so grateful for teachers who challenge and find unique ways to help their students think and learn.
Like this one. Thank you.
